February 17, 2013

"... and they turned and smiled back at me before they faded through a door into warm darkness. "

This sentence — can you tell it's from "The Great Gatsby"? — is for betamax3000, the upstart genius of the Althouse commentariat, who's vocally jonesing for another "Gatsby" sentence (after a couple of Gatsbyless days on this blog).

And on post #2 — "And down the street is a retro-chic bakery, where... the windows are decorated with bird silhouettes — the universal symbol for 'hipsters welcome'" — he was in full-on "Gatsby" project mode:

"They knew that presently dinner would be over and a little later the antlers, too, would be over and casually put away."

Don't understand the references? Maybe this post is not for you. This post is for betamax3000 and the rest of the subcategory of commentariat that is coming along for the ride in the careening car that is the isolated, ripped-out-of-context "Gatsby" sentence. Scanning my e-book just now, I hear myself mutter "ah, there's a great gatsby sentence," and I wonder if I'm saying "a 'Great Gatsby' sentence" or "a great 'Gatsby' sentence." But I'm saving that one for tomorrow. It's a doozy. A daisy. Today's sentence is a bit more subtle. Subtle and wan and vague and faded and sadly smiling over all the things that might have been but were never pursued.

Here's this woman with whom the narrator not only has no relationship, he only imagines following her off the main avenue down the hidden street where her apartment would presumably be on a corner. By not following her, you don't have to see that she would not turn back at you and smile. But in your mind, she could smile. And then even in your fantasy, she goes into her apartment without you. And she doesn't even forthrightly go in — she fades through. And there isn't even a real interior space where real people could embrace. There's only warm darkness.

Ah! But warm darkness... fading into... hidden street... We're not talking about the the landscape of the city at all, are we? It's the landscape of the female body. And, of course, when you see a woman walking on the avenue, you can only imagine traversing that place.

56 comments:

Naked Drunk Writer Analyst Robot compares syntax and word choice against a technical re-statement of the sentence. The Deviation from Coherency is weighed against Punctuation and Alliteration Algorithms, then blind-tested against a random sample of Drunk Simulation Models to produce the Probability of Inebriation in the Writer at the time of the sentence's Conception.

There is also a 12% probability that the writer was in the Black-Out Drunk strata.

Sober, Fitzgerald was an engine out of oil, all smoke and cracked writer's block.

When Black Out Drunk the words would flow and tumble -- a "ride in the careening car" as it were. Sing-song alliteration and flights of fancy fluttering through the endlessly blowing curtains with no thought given to restraint.

Sober again, he would review the Gift that he had left himself as Black Out Drunk and shape the clay, leaving out the odd line From That Song In His Head and hiding the self-loathing to the best of his skewed abilities.

Ewing is another iteration of Elevator Boy: Fitzgerald is summoning out the Black Out Drunk and belittling him, showing the Voices with their scanty hair just who is in charge. The embarrassment is what Fitzgerald no doubt did the previous night, if he Could Only Remember.

Obviously a fantasy/imagining. No sane woman would smile at a stranger as she enters her apartment or house; it might be misconstrued as an invitation. The the purvy stranger pushes thir wy in behind you while the door is open. Feels very rapey to me. If I didn't know it was an imagination moment, my stress response would kick in.

Elevator Boy say her first: her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crêpe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering.

Out of the corner of his eye Fitzgerald saw that the blocks of the sidewalks really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees, he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder and be blissfully free of Elevator Boy.

"You don't have the guts to do it," Elevator Boy said. "Without me you have no guts at all."

"Hemingway wrote the Bread of Life; you write the frosted wedding-cake. Soon Black Out Drunk will give up and leave you in disgust and you will be a useless empty husk penning verbal flourishes for greeting cards."

Sometimes Elevator Boy would take the Blacked Out Fitzgerald out for a boisterous night on the town. Sure, they would get into the odd scuffle or fight, but when Fitzgerald awoke the black eyes and busted lip were his alone.

Elevator Boy knew that -- one-on-one -- he could take on Hemingway. He could match him book-for-book, scuffle-for-scuffle, woman-for-woman. How frustrating that the Fitzgerald would have none of it: he liked things safe, pretty, wistful, viewed from a distance with clean hands and clean shoes.

It was to Elevator Boy's eternal discomfort that he could show a door to Fitzgerald and open it, but could never push him through.

Fitzgerald feared who and what was behind the next door; Hemingway couldn't wait to bull rush his way through.

Elevator Boy dreamed of Running With The Bulls, of Bullfights and boozy Spanish streets at Three AM.

Fitzgerald would rather spend hours buffing a sentence like

"There was a ripe mystery about it, a hint of bedrooms up-stairs more beautiful and cool than other bedrooms, of gay and radiant activities taking place through its corridors, and of romances that were not musty and laid away already in lavender but fresh and breathing and redolent of this year’s shining motor-cars and of dances whose flowers were scarcely withered"

in a hundred different ways, some minutely better, some minutely worse.

Sometimes it is better to have a bull's shit at your feet rather than spend the time polishing your own.

Black Out Drunk just wanted to be left in peace, with the Words alone. He would read Fitzgerald's editing of him and forlornly shake his head: Black Out Drunk's words may have spilled out of the sides of the glass at times, but they were of The Moment, spontaneous, free.

Fitzgerald would then arrange those words like a obsessive stamp collector, until it was as if they were frozen in a snow globe.

""There was a ripe mystery about it" Black Out Drunk wrote over and over:

"There was a ripe mystery about it"

"There was a ripe mystery about it"

but he could not figure out where the ripe mystery led. Bedrooms? Lavender? Shining Motor-Cars?

Black Out Drunk could feel himself losing the thread.

Edit all of THAT into something, Fitzgerald.

Ohh -- by the way, the black eye is from Elevator Boy: I was wobbling in the chair when he pushed me over the desk and I hit our face on the Radiator. In the morning you will no doubt weep isolated and unpunctual tears."

Let's see. Corners on hidden streets? Doesn't sound like your upscale kind of woman. It's a woman you see, and feel the connection, and she does too. Is the smile an invitation to come in and have a one night stand? Somehow, I doubt it, unless he is talking about prostitutes and some hidden desire to pay for it. Is that too banal for Gatsby? perhaps not. Maybe that's all there is to it.

It seems more to me about the connection to a woman. The smile, an invitation to continue, but there is a closed door. To open the door means more commitment. Something one can do, but it is not cheap. It is the potential connection with a woman, that he can't have, because of the delta between his social status and her social status.

Fitzgerald had grown accustomed to waking up after an evening with Black Out Drunk and Elevator Boy: the blinding headaches and the occasional black eyes were expected, as were the urine-soaked pants and broken fingernails.

He had accepted being abruptly slapped by women he could swear he had never met before.

But waking with three trout pushed down the front of his trousers, this indeed caused surprise: no doubt there was now another restaurant in town that would not accept him through their door.